Daughter of Fortune | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Daughter of Fortune Critical Overview

Allende is one of the most popular female writers from Latin America. She is also one of the leading South American feminists. Her female characters rebuke the traditional confines of patrimony and often challenge the roles that are imposed on them by their society. However, in Daughter of Fortune, Sophia A. McClennen states for Review of Contemporary Fiction, Allende has gone one step further: ". . . the protagonist recognizes that her identity does not depend entirely on the man she loves." McClennen also points out that, by Allende disguising her protagonist as a boy throughout the last half of the novel, she provides many interesting topics of discussion about "gendered identities."

Peter Donaldson, writing for New Statesman, found Daughter of Fortune to possibly be Allende's best novel yet. Although he feels that the second half of Allende's book seems to be diverted from the "driven clarity" of the...
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